Next Phase Newsletter

By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, LSN

If you are a life science entrepreneur who has reached the exciting phase of development when you are actively seeking investors in your firm and product, congratulations! Growing a company to this stage is not an easy process, and although attracting funding isn’t either, if you take the right approach, winning an allocation can become not only an achievable milestone but also a feat you accomplish repeatedly…

Click here to read the entire book introduction

Author, Dennis Ford, and Contributor, Alejandro Zamorano
Book Signing at 2014 BIO International Convention

By Tom Crosby, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

Don’t miss an excellent chance to hear directly from pharma executives looking to fill pipeline gaps via strategic partnerships & alliances; LSN is bringing together representatives from some of the most active big pharma companies involved in early stage life sciences.

Moderated by Bill Kohlbrenner of AbbVie, the audience will hear from:

• Florian Puehler, Alliance Manager at Bayer HealthCare
• Richard Brudnick, Vice President of Business Development and M&A at Biogen Idec
• Donnie McGrath, Vice President of Business Development at Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Melinda Richter, Head of Janssen Labs, Johnson & Johnson 
• Michael Draper, Director of Scouting and Partnering at Sanofi

Panelists will discuss in-depth the key motivators behind big pharma’s shift towards an early stage strategy as a way to fill the gaps in their pipelines. What indication areas are the most sought after? How does an early stage entrepreneur interface with business development executives from pharmaceutical companies? LSN’s Big Pharma RESI Panelists will shed light on these questions and more.

Hear from big pharma executives as they explain how they engage with early stage startups, and how they like to be contacted. The speakers will help the audience understand their timeline for contact, and give advice on how to create a dialogue that leads to a relationship and an eventual alliance. If you need to understand the timeframe and limitations of how big pharma corporate works, this expert session is crucial for you to attend.

By Jack Fuller, Business Development, LSN

The perfect fit, the good fit, and the stretcher. Those are the three types of scientist-entrepreneurs I’ve seen do well in their fundraising efforts.

Day in and day out, LSN works with life science companies that are raising capital, and we see an enormous number of talented and intelligent people who cannot conceptualize and execute an outbound fundraising campaign. For one reason or another, otherwise smart people are not able to determine who to approach for capital or discuss their ideas and technology in a clear and convincing manner.

However, some scientist-entrepreneurs are a perfect fit or a good fit for successfully running an outbound fundraising campaign, and some can stretch and make it happen.

The Perfect Fit

This is someone who has built a team to support the fundraising process. The perfect fit realizes the importance of continually updating a contact database with the latest relevant players. He or she understands that professional marketing materials are critical. And he or she is able and willing to do whatever is necessary to secure the future of the company. With little assistance, the perfect fit can take a list of qualified investors and have meaningful dialogues that eventually lead to allocations.

The Good Fit

This usually is a person who is dedicated to fundraising. The good fit has contacts in the industry, is not afraid to pick up the phone and call a stranger, and has run a meeting with potential investors. Still, despite his or her experience, this individual often has difficulty branding the company and technology, crafting a message, and presenting not only a compelling narrative to investors but also one that’s clear so investors can determine quickly if there is a fit with their investment criteria. Because of his or her experience, however, the good fit recognizes what’s missing and can get up to speed quickly.

The Stretcher

This is often a former scientist who had a great idea, which launched a company. Then, he or she wants to get to the next level and realizes that raising money from investors is different from asking friends and family. The stretcher often needs help with fundamental sales and marketing tactics, overhauling the investor materials, and tackling list and task management. Because this individual has an uncommon desire to learn and do whatever is necessary—to stretch—he or she can become a successful fundraiser.

Which one are you?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Nono Hu, Marketing/PR Manager

(617) 580-5011

m.hu@lifesciencenation.com

LSN Announces Life Science Fundraising Accelerator

BOSTON (June 19, 2014) — Life Science Nation (LSN), in collaboration with the UMASS Boston Venture Development Center (VDC), announces Life Science Fundraising Accelerator, a program designed to fill the void in the procurement of early stage life science capital. Currently, the scientist-entrepreneur struggles to go “the last three feet” and get in front of an investor, create a dialogue, build a relationship, and secure capital allocations.

The Life Science Fundraising Accelerator is a 90-day program that:

• Prepares start-ups for a global fundraising campaign
• Educates the founding team on the basics of raising capital in today’s competitive landscape
• Packages the founding team for a fundraising campaign, creating the necessary branding and messaging, including a logo, tagline, elevator pitch, executive summary, PowerPoint presentations, and investor-centric website
• Provides tactical, hands-on, assistance in executing fundraising campaigns, including setting up a cloud-based infrastructure to manage a list of investor prospects and the required follow-up that’s associated with an outbound direct-marketing campaign

This kind of acceleration is only available today to the largest biotech and pharma companies that work with top-tier investment banks in preparation for the all-important road show before an IPO.

Initially, the ideal candidates for the Accelerator program will be emerging biotech and medtech companies that have entered (or are preparing to enter) clinical trials. These start-ups have significant animal data, and possibly even some human data, and are likely seeking $1 million to $20 million to further develop an asset through the clinical-trial process.

Dennis Ford, CEO of LSN, noted that scientist-entrepreneurs experience a conundrum when it comes funding their entity. “Everybody understands their marching orders, but hardly anyone has been given the training and tools to carry out the mission,” Ford stated.

The Accelerator has two business aspects. The first is a traditional fee for service. The second is an evergreen grant initiative. The latter program hopes to recruit incubators into the program by having them nominate scientist-entrepreneurs who are ready for a fundraising campaign. The Accelerator program will provide these scientist-entrepreneurs with an evergreen grant (details to follow). This aspect of the program intends to be a self-funding vehicle so that other entrepreneurs can have the same opportunity.

William Brah, Director of the UMASS Boston VDC, said, “LSN and the VDC have been successfully piloting a version of this program for about a year. Early discussions with the incubator community show vigorous support for the project. The Massachusetts life science community has been working closely together for years and hopefully this program will garner traction quickly.”

Life Science Nation (LSN) accelerates the business of early stage life science through a Match.com-like sourcing platform. LSN researches and curates market intelligence on global early stage investment, tracking ten categories of life science investors. LSN also manages the Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference series, which brings together global emerging biotech and medtech companies with early stage investors. LSN recently published a book, The Life Science Executive’s Fundraising Manifesto.

UMASS Boston’s Venture Development Center (VDC) was created to pursue new knowledge and train next-generation inventors. It is a mixed-use incubator designed to support technology and life science entrepreneurs. The VDC has a reputation for building community among life science entrepreneurs and delivering business tactics that help propel resident firms forward to commercialization.

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By Tom Crosby, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

There’s a lot going on in early stage venture-capital investment, and everyone is trying to follow the bouncing ball. In light of reports that venture-backed life science and biotech deals are off to their hottest start since 2007, LSN is pleased to announce the venture capital panel for the upcoming RESI Conference: Re-envisioning the Traditional Venture Model.

The panel will have representatives from some of the biggest global VC firms. Moderated by Bernadette Adamo of Silicon Valley Bank, the audience will hear from Kush Parmar, Partner at 5AM Ventures, Jayson Punwani, Partner at Pappas Ventures, Jerel Davis, Operating Partner at Versant Ventures, and Kiran Reddy, Associate Partner at Third Rock Ventures.

Though life science VCs have faced many challenges in the past decade, this adaptive investor class has reached an inflection point of late. The delegates featured on the upcoming RESI VC panel will speak about trends they’re seeing in today’s marketplace, and their thoughts on the future of venture investments.

By Michael Quigley, Research Manager, LSN

There is a common perception in the industry that direct medical-device investment has all but frozen over the past few years. As a fundraising entrepreneur, this is an easy kickstand to lean on when you have trouble securing financing for your proprietary technology. Data gathered over the past nine months by the research team here at LSN paints a different, much more positive picture, however. After reaching out to thousands of investors throughout the life science industry, we have identified and interviewed more than 300 qualified investors actively seeking to allocate to the medical device space.

Many may argue that 300 investors represent the marketplace as a whole, not the investors interested in early stage, higher-risk opportunities. However, the chart below shows the highest level of investor interest lies in the venture stage, which LSN defines as companies that have raised at least one round of financing outside of friends and family but have yet to reach commercialization for their product. And while interest in the growth stage does outweigh seed, there are still a large number of investors with capital looking to invest in compelling seed-stage opportunities.

Analyzing this data further, we find that the investors looking into this space are very diverse. (See the chart below)

The interest in the medtech sector is also reflected in PWC’s MoneyTree Report, which shows that 25 deals accounted for total early stage medical-device funding increasing by 11% in Q1 2014 to $216 million, as compared with $194 million from 29 deals in Q1 2013. The average investment for early stage device firms also reached an all-time high of $8.6 million.

This significant uptick in dollars invested and decrease in deal volume tells us something interesting about the changing landscape: Although the numbers may not be as high as they have been historically (and it is also worth noting that PWC’s findings only include reported financings), a large group of investors are without a doubt staying involved and investing in the medical device industry. However, these investors seem to be more selective, investing more capital into slightly fewer deals. Now more than ever, it is crucial for medical device entrepreneurs to understand which investors might be interested in their specific technology and how to present the opportunity to these firms to best demonstrate value.

Source: http://www.mddionline.com/blog/devicetalk/heres-new-vc-investment-reality-of-2014-for-medtech